Design

September 14, 2008

Statue In Honor of Ruben Um Nyobe in Eseka

"The collective memory of a nation is represented in part by the memorials it chooses to erect. Public memory is enshrined in memorials from the newly opened Holocaust memorial in Berlin to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC. Whatever a nation chooses to memorialize in physical monument, or perhaps more significantly, what not to memorialize, is an indicator of the collective memory." (Anonymous)

After nearly half a century of institutional attempts to erase Ruben Um Nyobe from Cameroon's collective memory, the Union des Populations du Cameroun (UPC) began the slow process of redefining the nationalist leader's legacy by constructing a monument in his honor in the town of Eseka where he is buried.

The project went ahead - inspite of the lukewarm attitude, if not hostility of the Biya regime -because the Eseka municipal council is now controlled by the UPC, the party which Um Nyobe founded in April 1948.

The project was initiated by the town's UPC mayor, Reverend Samuel Biko II, and constructed with funds from Frederic Kodock's faction of the UPC. In fact, an inscription at the base of the statue states that Kodock is the "promoter and finacier" of the project...

Inaugurated on June 22, 2007 in the absence of government reprentatives who boycotted the event, the monument shows Um Nyobe returning from his December 1952 trip to the United Nations headquarters in New York where he forcefully made the case for the independence and reunification of Cameroon.

Comments

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"Reunification"? What a farce to hijack what was not theirs, especially when applied by the neocolonial Ahidjo-Biya govt. People should read Anyangwe's new book for the real history. "Reunification" was a myth created by French Camerounese exiles in The Southern Cameroons to suit their own ends, which were not the ends of the Southern Cameroonians themselves.

That is all true, although Um Nyobe is a Camerounese hero and the fascist Ahidjo coopted some of the ideas that suited him and converted them to demonic purposes. We too have to raise statues to such heroes as Kuva and Mukong.

Ma Mary, why don't you erect your own statues? all you do is sit cross-legged and criticise the people who have actually achieved something.

Don't put your usual Southern Cameroons propagandist spin on this fine article and memorial. This has nothing to do with your flawed gospel. The statue is simply immortalising what Um Nyobe stood for, whether you agree with it or not. It is not a "Farce"...it is a memorial immortalises his ideals.

The only "farce" here is this propaganda you are trying to shove down our throats. This is a good moment for this hero...don't spoil it with your rubbish.

ma mary is right,
this story should be title HISTORY OF LA REPUBLIQUE DU CAMEROUN,since umyobe knew nothing about endelley, mukette, and all the southern cameroons heroes, who were
fighting forindependence from colonial britain. he knew the boundaery of his cameroun ended well at the mungo bridge,nothing more,plus cameroun is in central africa,from the atlantic gulf of guinea,while southern cameroons,is in wesr africa, soo we are talking two distinct histories for two distinct nations.